Updates on life in Japan

Sanage-Takahama Fault (Aichi Prefecture)

This is just an extra entry for folks living in the Tokai area, especially if you’re on the east side of Nagoya.

In today’s Asahi news (Japanese version), there is an article on the predicted quake that is supposed to hit the Tokai / Tonankai region with the next few years. It asks what would happen in the case of an earthquake on the western side of Japan and shows that the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) would cease. It listed the Sanaga-Takahama fault line, so we looked it up and found the following:

TOKYO, May 14 (AP) – (Kyodo)—A government panel said Wednesday that if a powerful earthquake were to hit a wide area encompassing Osaka, Nagoya and surrounding regions it could cause damage totaling 107 trillion yen.

Such enormous financial loss would stem from the fact that both the Osaka and Nagoya regions are crowded with wooden houses vulnerable to strong quakes, the research panel of the Central Disaster Prevention Council said.

It said such a quake could bring traffic on main transportation services — Shinkansen bullet train lines and automobile expressways — in the two regions to a halt, with the effects of the catastrophe spreading across the country given that the routes are linked to Tokyo, the nation’s economic and political capital.

The panel’s findings, coming just days after a magnitude 7.8 quake shook inland China, will serve to emphasize to citizens, the government and businesses the need to build quake-resistant homes and infrastructures and examine city planning aimed at minimizing quake- induced damage.

In the event of a huge temblor, the greater Osaka area in western Japan could suffer financial damage of up to 74 trillion yen and the central Japan area surrounding Nagoya 33 trillion yen, estimates the panel chaired by Toki Kenzo, earthquake engineering professor at Ritsumeikan University.

The estimates have been made on the assumption that the 42-kilometer Uemachi fault line cutting through Osaka Prefecture from south to north and the Sanage–Takahamafault, a V-shaped, 51 km line running through the western part of Aichi Prefecture cause a temblor with a magnitude of more than 7.6 at noon in winter, greater than the magnitude 7.3 quake that mainly hit Kobe, near Osaka, in the early morning in January 1995.

These figures for the two regions are smaller than the maximum 106 trillion yen in damage estimated for the greater Tokyo area in a major quake. But the amount for the Osaka region falls just short of Japan’s central government budget of roughly 83 trillion yen for fiscal 2008.

Of the 74 trillion yen in damage estimated for the Osaka area, the destruction of houses and buildings would account for 82 percent. The remainder is that of an indirect kind stemming from a halt to production at industrial plants, for example, the panel said.

For the Nagoya region, the panel has architectural damage accounting for 76 percent of the economic losses estimated.

The estimated percentages representing so-called “direct damage” arising from the collapse of houses and buildings are higher than the 63 percent forecast for the Tokyo area, which means that higher proportions of residents in the Osaka and Nagoya areas are likely to suffer serious hardship.

If it takes six months to restore damaged transportation networks, the Osaka area would suffer an additional 3.4 trillion yen in financial losses and the Nagoya area 3.9 trillion yen, according to the panel.

Some 5.5 million residents of the Osaka area would need to evacuate within a day after the quake and the number would be 2.5 million for the Nagoya area, the panel says.

With the wreckage of countless buildings blocking traffic, entire areas of Osaka Prefecture and western Aichi could be cut off from the rest of the country, posing great difficulty for rescue workers, according to the panel.

Last November the panel estimated quake-related death tolls at 42,000 for the Osaka area and 11,000 for the Nagoya area.

Many seismologists believe the two regions are at high risk of being hit by several major earthquakes at around 60-year intervals following other big temblors expected to strike somewhere along the coastal region from Shizuoka Prefecture through Kochi Prefecture in the first half of the 21st century.